Bilski is out

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday in the long-awaited Bilski case, a
case that the FSF had promoted as a vehicle for directly limiting
software patents. As such, the decision disappoints, with the justices
providing a narrow ruling and rejecting Bilski's business method
patent.

The software patent mess that the US finds itself in today is a
product of the US judicial system and not Congress. It is therefore
all the more disappointing that the Supreme Court failed to use Bilski
to clean house and remove software from the scope of patentability.

On a positive note, the majority opinion does stress past decisions
that clearly limit the patenting of software.

Introducing campaigns summer interns

Steven DuBois and Danny Piccirillo are our summer campaigns interns.
They are going to release a weekly video blog concerning the progress
they made (in Ogg format, of course!)

The FSF internship program gives you the chance to be closely working
and learning with FSF staff in advancing software freedom. Consider
applying for the program whether you are a designer, good writer,
translator or someone else who can help the FSF!

GNU social: Next steps

A group of core GNU social developers had the opportunity to meet with
Blaine Cook, of OAuth fame. In the midst of figuring out the plan for
moving ahead with GNU social, Blaine was able to provide the group
with a tremendous amount of insight into useful approaches for
controlling privacy in distributed social networks.

Google's updated WebM license

Last month, Google announced their WebM project, which provided a free
software implementation of their VP8 video codec and a license to
exercise the patents the company held on the software. (This after we
appealed to them to do just that a couple of months prior.) The
license they chose was unambiguously free. Unfortunately, the
interaction between the copyright license and the patent license made
the result GPL-incompatible. Based on the concerns of developers
writing GPL-covered software, Google publicly stated that they would
take some time to review the WebM license and try to address the
community's concerns. Today, they released a revised license, and it
is GPL-compatible.

Defective by Design sticker contest winners announced!

We now have an official winner of our sticker design contest announced
in April.

So, without further ado, we are pleased to announce Jeremy Todaro is
the winner of our Defective by Design sticker contest for his accurate
portrayal of Steve Jobs as Big Brother. Jeremy is a freelance artist
from Wentzville, Missouri who specializes in using free software tools
for his work. Well done Jeremy!

You can get the new sticker, and a package of others, at the FSF shop.
Please get some and let others see them on your laptop and bag!

More about the App Store GPL Enforcement

Since our announcement that we were pursuing a compliance case
involving GNU Go in Apple's App Store, we've received a lot of
questions about the details of the conflict between the GPL and
Apple's terms of service. For those of you who are interested, we're
providing those details here.

Patent Absurdity film DVDs sent to over 200 key people

After more than 100,000 views for the FSF-funded short-film Patent
Absurdity, the FSF, working with the well-known blogger Brad Feld,
asked for the names of the 200 people most influential to the software
patent debate in the US, in order to send copies of the documentary
to them in the postal mail.

Feld has sent the copies attached with a message that explains the
issue of software patents and how they corrupt the system, and he
volunteered to answer their questions regarding the film!

Job Opening: FSF Campaigns Manager

The FSF is hiring a Campaigns Manager to be part of a team that
directs and coordinates our campaigns for software freedom. This
is an opportunity to take a senior role in the organization that
promotes the message that software freedom is a must-have right.

Take action with the FSF

Contributions from thousands of individual members enable the FSF's
work. You can contribute by joining at http://www.fsf.org/join. If
you're already a member, you can help refer new members (and earn some
rewards) by adding a line with your member number to your email
signature like:

The FSF is also always looking for volunteers
(http://www.fsf.org/volunteer). From rabble-rousing to hacking, from
issue coordination to envelope stuffing -- there's something here for
everybody to do. Also, head over to our campaign section
(http://www.fsf.org/campaigns) and take action on software patents,
DRM, free software adoption, OpenDocument, RIAA and more.

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